@jollytinker Yes, actually. It was a MSL Platinum signature on a Saphir mounted on a CS Port turntable and the 4 point was on a Kuzma R. Now, this was at a friend's house and he feels the Saphir sounded better. He's a lot more impressionable than I am. Anybody can make a fat tonearm wand out of synthetic sapphire. I want to see one made out of boron.
@lewm You and I absolutely agree to a T on azimuth. I line the diamond up at 90 degrees and forget about it. Done that for 55 some odd years. Fozgometer my backside. As an aside (@terry9 might like this). I was listening to a cartridge I had owned for about 6 months, a Corina Round album, Tigermending, I was thinking that the album's production was not as good as I had thought it was when I started to hear mistracking. I got up immediately expecting to see a wad of dust or something strangling the stylus. Nothing, clean as a whistle, but the stylus looked funny. I got out my magnifier and a flashlight to have a look. Let's say in the normal record playing position a stylus is pointed at 6 oclk. Looking from the front this one was pointed at 8 oclk. Otherwize the stylus and cantilever looked perfectly normal. The cantilever had rotated in the suspension, somebody forgot the cement I guess. I took a picture of it under the microscope and sent it to the company. They immediately sent me a new cartridge and a shipping label for the old one. The thing is, I seriously doubt that stylus rotated abruptly. It slowly shifted under the various forces at play until it got to the point I noticed it, about 60 degrees off axis. The system sounded much better when I put another cartridge in, but that was an abrupt change. The stylus shifting slowly was not. It happen so slowly I did not notice. However, it is important to note that the cartridge's internals were all in proper alignment with the record and it was still getting a stereo signal up until it misstracked and that is when the shoulder of the stylus hits the groove wall. The stylus was a modern fine line of the type used by Lyra and My Sonic Lab. It has a more rounded tip and the fine line continues a ways up each side. If anyone thinks they can hear a stylus (I did not say cartridge) a few degrees off vertical they have much better hearing than I. My stylus gets an easy 40 degrees.
